At the Jungle Gym
by gkmoberg1
Summary: A series of shorts providing 'what if' paths. Each occurs at the same moment in the story yet each is entirely unrelated to the others.
1. Chapter 1

At the Jungle Gym... (Take One)  
by gkmoberg1

Characters and story belong to J. A. Lindqvist of Sweden.  
The fingers that typed this fanfic belong to me.

Tuesday  
October 20, 1981

In the sparse light of the inner courtyard, a boy stalked out of an entrance door and then across the left-strewn, cold ground. As he approached the swings and play set in the center he looked around furtively at the windows of the buildings that surrounded this little island. He saw nobody; he heard nothing but the gentle night breeze. Continuing, he crossed over the sandbox, leaving imprints of his Keds in the sand, and made his way over to a pair of trees. They stood like sentries in the very middle. There he waited, throwing glances up at the buildings. But all remained quiet.

Time passed. The swaying of the courtyard's upper tree branches gave a slow movement to the patterns of shade and light, but nothing else moved. He watched the tendrils of his breath form in the air, glide away and diminish. To warm his toes he tried curling and releasing them within his sneakers, but this was little help.

After waiting for several more minutes while leaning against one of the two center trees, he reached into the pocket of his winter coat and pulled from it a short knife. With his opposite hand he removed the leather blade cover and slid this back into this coat. The glint of the steel blade caught his eye and the handle felt good in his hand.

Stepping then away from the tree, he turned about and struck hard with the knife. "Squeal! Squeal like a pig," he said, thrusting the point of the blade into the tree. Then "Pig. Go on, squeal some more," he said as he delivered further thrusts of the blade into the tree.

The blade was solid and the knife felt right to him. He held it up to his face and admired the edge of it while gently and carefully gliding his opposite index finger along its length. He was careful not to slice himself but instinctively he put the finger to his mouth once he finished the stroke and gave it a gentle taste. No blood. He lowered the knife for another thrust.

But then came a sound from behind him. He hesitated a moment but heard nothing more. Suspicious, he turned anyway and looked. The sandbox and swings were empty. The jungle gym looked empty. Or was it? He looked carefully and thought he might be seeing the form of something at its top.

Stepping away from the tree he moved towards the jungle gym, knife still in his favored hand and giving him confidence. Indeed, there was a form. A kid. How or when that happened, he didn't know.

"You," he said, looking now tight upwards to the top of the jungle gym. "Who are you?" The little figure did not move. As the light and shade of the courtyard lighting continued its slow gentle movements he caught better glimpses of the figure. It was a girl. Young, but not a child. But also likely not his age or older.

"I'm talking to you," he said a bit louder.

"I know," came the reply. The voice was not what he was expecting for a kid girl.

"What are you doing there?"

"What are you doing there?" she asked right back, raising an arm and pointing towards the tree where he had been standing.

He looked down at his right hand and the knife. Yet, he did not put away the blade and continued to hold it. Looking back up at her he said, "Never you mind. Do I know you? You new?"

Again the girl did not answer. Rather, she looked up at the sky and its bright moon and seemed to exhale a long sigh.

"Are you going to answer me or not?" he asked.

"Don't think so," she said after a beat.

"Alright then," he continued. "I'm here to meet a kid. Oskar Eriksson. You know him?"

"No," she answered, at last answering at least one question.

"Does he come out here at night? Oh, of course you wouldn't know. Look, I'm here to see him. Got a message for him."

"Oskar?"

"Yes, Oskar. If you meet him, you tell him I was here for him."

"And who are you?"

"Jonny. That's all you need to know."

"Jonny."

"He'll know me."

"He'll know you," she repeated.

Frustrated with her he growled, "You know how to talk, right? Or are you stupid?"

She was quiet for a moment and then moved. Rising up she took a step forward and dropped straight down from the top of the playset, landing before him with barely a thud.

"Am I stupid?" she inquired, leaning towards him ever so slightly. Her face was not far from his but the darkness made the distance hard to tell.

She was nearly his height. Large eyes looked at him hard from under dark hair that clung to her head and tickled the top of her shoulders. She was thin, very thin, yet bore an odd intensity.

"I did," he replied hoping she'd step back.

"You're going to call me stupid?" Her voice had a rising defiance to it. He adjusted his grip on the knife he still held at his side, although he had no intention of using it. "Go ahead," she continued, "Go ahead. Call me stupid. Pig." Her eyes seemed to be darkening, if that were possible, almost as if they were two holes sinking back into her head.

The use of 'Pig' did it. She had heard him at the tree. She was a sneak, listening in on him. But the 'Pig', it riled him, especially in the way she had said it. Her determined voice, which seemed wrong for her. 'Pig' she had called him. "You _Are_ Stupid," he said slowly, rounding his lips with each syllable and intentionally overemphasizing the sounds. The anger in his voice sounded good to him. Knife in his hand, he gripped it harder; it felt good.

A long slow breath escaped her mouth, steady and low as it resonated off her lips. She approached yet closer until he could get a taste of that breath. It wasn't good, he decided, not the breath a young girl should have. But by then it was too late.

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	2. Chapter 2

At the jungle gym... (Take Two)

(Same day as Take One, Same hour of the evening as Take One. But ... a different scenario)

(If you know the characters of the novel 'Let the Right One In', this should make sense. If you've only seen the film, sorry.)

Tuesday  
October 20, 1981

One of the doors that led into the courtyard from the encircling apartment buildings banged open. Three boys stumbled loudly into the darkness. Their cries and whoops were immediate and loud, splintering what had been the absolute quiet of the courtyard.

Onward came the three, stumbling over their own feet and then each other. There was a pellmell scuffle about them that aroused suspicion. Their speech was loud yet hardly discernible. Yet the three were in cahoots with each other in their merrymaking and they strode onward over the leaves and grass. Then two veered off and headed for the arched entryway that led to the street. The third erupted in song and gave them a hearty wave. He seemed to be having trouble with his chosen song's lyrics but his enthusiasm did not waver. Finally, as the first two departed this third one fell to silence. He then spun about, lost his footing and soon hit the ground.

A slight creek came from the courtyard play set. The breeze blew gently. Silence returned.

Half a minute later the boy sat back up. He returned to song, but not as loud as before. Staggering upright he wandered in a zigzag manner through the grass, still humming and mumbling. When he arrived at the swing set he launched himself upon it. Lying himself face down across the seat of one of the swings he balanced himself and then extended his arms and legs into the air. "I am a bird!" he exclaimed and seemed genuinely delighted. But then slowly he faded forward until his chin and nose drifted down to the ground. "Nooooo" he said and crumpled completely out of the swing. There he lay, quiet for another minute but then seeming to come awake again with a chuckle.

Rolling onto his back he took in the sky. The moon was huge and soon his arms extended upwards as if to try and grasp it. "My hands!" he then cried. "They're blue!" and he seemed to shudder.

A clambering was heard from the jungle gym and a child appeared from it, almost as if from thin air. It was but a short distance to the swing set and soon the child was standing over top of the teenager.

"Why are you hands blue?" asked the child. With hands on hips the child bent forward until almost at a right angle at the waist. The little face stared down at the boy.

"Ohhhh, they are," said the boy. He was in rapture turning his hands before his face. "And they sparkle."

"No they don't." The child sniffed and then bent closer and sniffed again. "What is wrong with you?"

"If I wave them, they blur," the boy replied and then proceeded to do so with both hands in an erratic manner. "Oh look!"

The child backed away a step and sat down upon the abandoned swing seat. Then, commandingly ordered "You are not right. Go home."

"What if one of my hands were yellow? Then I could make green!" said the boy, still waving his hands before his face. "Yes!"

"Go home."

"Oh oh look, green!"

The child looked up at the moon and gave a long sigh. Then after standing up, the child wandered off but not before dumping a pile of hastily gathered leaves on to the boy's face.

"Ahh a leaf storm!" the boy was screaming in delight as the child headed out through the arched gateway and out to the street.

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	3. Chapter 3

At the jungle gym... (Take Three)

Tuesday  
October 20, 1981

Eli, standing near the top of the jungle gym, edges slightly to the left. He secures his hands again on the top rail. "What are you thinking?" he says quietly as he lays his chin against the shoulder of his friend's jacket. The fabric is cool and slick. Modern material. Synthetic. It has a slight give and he likes being able to sense the physical connection even if muted by the layers.

There is a pause and then a sigh. Before them in the darkness lies the playground of the apartment building courtyard. The sandbox, strewn with brown leaves, looks cold and uninviting. Edges of several toy cars and a truck pierce through the sand which has formed ripples about them. They remind Eli of the shells he used to find along the water's edge near Oxelösund. He had taken them up in in his hands and had shared them with the children at Stjärnholm manor. The memory takes him back for a while and he recalls the quiet of the harbor and 'Stjärnholms slott' as it had existed in the early nineteenth century. The boats, the gulls, the fields, the shore, the wild weather and even the sereneness of the same water on quiet nights. Louis De Geer had been, for a time, the closest thing he had to a friend. He lived at Stjärnholms at that time. Louis was forever under tight control, but the two were able to make games of play through windows late at night when all were to have been in bed. The boy had been hardly more than eight years old. The manor house and wing were then stuffed full of his brothers and sisters. Strict discipline was the rule, Eli remembered that clearly. It limited the time he could have with the boy whom he met occasionally peering through windows late at night at the moon. There had been that potential of being able to share time with somebody and to do things that were fun once again. But these were whisked away, much like how the waves on the shore would take away the shells it had deposited the day before. Friendship with Louis was never allotted the chances needed to build; there was never more than the odd encounter. Years later, Eli had returned to the same town, the same manor, the same window. He had looked for the lined up shells inside the window sill where he had handed them through. But the room had long been re-purposed and the shells were long since cleaned away.

Eli realizes his friend is answering, has been answering while Eli was lost in reverie. "... in time it will work out." In reply to the answer he has not been paying attention to, Eli nudges his chin along the shoulder. His partner sympathizes and reaches over and ruffles his hair.

"I'm glad you climbed up here," Eli says, still a bit surprised that this has happened.

"Perhaps now you'd like to do something for me then."

Eli's mind wanders off again to memories of the rooftops of Stjärnholms, the eaves, the casement windows, the stately form of the manor and grounds. The sounds of the children being herded to bed, and being returned there should they dare to get up after having been put down. There had been hours he had spent by their window, just outside on the roof, waiting for any of them to come. Such joys he had experienced on being able to touch their quick fingers and arms in the games they would play. Small candy treats they sometimes gave him in exchange for the shells he handed back. Giggles in the dark and the sounds of quick, light feet fleeing back to bed upon the slightest hint of footsteps from elsewhere in the house. All these things played through his mind.

"Perhaps now you'd like to do something for me then," says his partner again and Eli plummets back to this evening, the cold night of an October that lies easily 140 years after his memories of Louis and their whispers through an open window.

"No. Not tonight. I don't feel like playing any more," he says. He moves away, climbs onto the sliding board and descends smoothly to the bottom. He knows that behind and above him, Håkan is still on the jungle gym - surely disappointed by this sullen swing of mood. But Eli trudges off. He scoops one of the cars from the sandbox and looks at it. it's a Volvo sedan with a wheel missing. He tosses it aside into the grass, wishing it were instead a shell, a shell from long ago, scooped from the shoreline and then passed in fun haste through a window to Louis - a friend who never got to be.

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End file.
